Last thursday I finally, finally got the one gear piece I've really been longing for with my priest - Althor's Abacus. The guild I used to be with didn't do 25mans, so I was left with pugging if I wanted it. I hate pugging raids, but I actually did it a couple of times just to have a chance at this. unfortunately, when pugging there's usually 10 other people who want the same item, anyone who's pugged for Deathbringers Will knows the feeling. On the other hand, if Althor's Abacus is what you really, really want from ICC you're quite lucky. It's probably the most easily obtainable heroic trinket in the instance. It drops from Gunship 25man, the easiest boss in the place. It is so easy that people usually do it on heroic mode even when pugging, so seeing it from that perspective I should've counted myself lucky. Trying to get DBW heroic is something else completely. Saurfang is rather difficult on heroic, and definitely not something you'll pug in the first place. But I've recently switched to raiding with a guild that focuses on 25man raids, and currently on 25man heroics. We've been going at Putricide hc (and downed him) and are currently working on Sindragosa Hc. So every new reset we clear our way through the first four bosses on heroic, since they're fairly easy and most people still need gear from them.
So last thursday we were doing just that and my trinket finally dropped. I've seen it drop before, but always lost it to someone who definitely didn't deserve it as much as I did. If I deserved anything in this game it was that trinket. Why did I want it so badly? Well first of all it's actually a decent upgrade. I switched Sliver of Pure Ice (hc) for it, so that's 23 spellpower and an "equip" instead of a "use". I had macro'd the use in the Sliver so that it was pretty much on cooldown all the time while fighting, but mana is rarely my problem when fighting. Some extra healing is always welcome however. But most importantly, I wanted this trinket to try it out. I wanted to test it and be able to see how good it really was and if I benefited more from it when being disc or holy.
What makes the Abacus so wonderful is that it doesn't matter how big your heal is, it can still proc the trinket. At first I thought it wouldn't be as good for a disc priest, since a shield probably wouldn't count as a heal and therefor not proc the trinket. And it doesn't. It will however proc from the heal that you get from Glyph of Power Word: Shield, a glyph that is already awesome and with this trinket made even better. When these kind of procs show up (like with the Val'Anyr) alot of discussions always arise about what healing class will benefit more from this kind of item? Val'Anyr is affected by the size of your heals, which means it can both be great for classes that have alot of healing done like paladins, or classes that heal alot of targets like druids. Yet the discussion is going wild about which one can use it slightly better. The bad thing about the Abacus being unaffected by heal size is that it is also unaffected by gear quality, it simply won't scale with your gear but perform just as good/bad if you're naked. As for which class can use it better, since it has an internal cooldown of 45seconds, like most trinkets, any healing class can use it just as well. In fact when looking around on the internet it seems it works pretty well for any kind of class that has some kind of heal, like druids with LOTP or warlocks for example.
I've only had the opportunity to try it in one raid so far and we only did three fights after Gunship that evening - Saurfang, Valithria and Sindragosa. For some reason I forgot to save the records of Valithria, but I kept my datas from Saurfang and Sindragosa. I was also able to play as disc in the one fight and holy in the other.
From the Saurfang fight we can see that it procced 4 times (called Echoes of Light) and healed for 5,3% of my total healing. So few procs, but big heals. Note that healing done on a disc priest never is particularly big, the real numbers are seen at Absorbs done. 4 procs would mean the fight took about 3 minutes which sounds about right for that fight. If I didn't do a heal just when the ICD of the trinket was done, then of course the timer is stretched somewhat. On a fight like Saurfang hc I doubt that I wasn't healing constantly though.
The other fight is from an unsuccesful but best try on Sindragosa hc, we got to 8% or so. It procced 11 times and did 3,3% of my total. Healing done from my trinket is lower over total done compared to when playing disc, but that probably has to do with what I already mentioned about disc healing done being generally low. If you only did one heal every 45 second it would probably show this trinket to have a really high percentage of healing done, but wouldn't mean it is better. This fight was much longer, a little over 8 minutes (8,25) instead of 3. The amount healed is also about three times higher. Using my awesome mathskills I can see that the hps of the trinket was 173 on the Saurfang fight playing disc, and 199 on the Sindragosa fight playing holy. They should be the same really, considering that the trinket is unaffected by gear or skills used as long as you use them continously, but since I only tried it on two fights and the amounts are close enough I won't draw any conclusions just yet.These are just a preliminary view on this lovely trinket, and I'll definitely get back to it when I find out more about it!
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